BBC - History - Historic Figures: The Cambridge Spies The Cambridge Spies z Guy Burgess, one of the 'Cambridge Spies' © Maclean, Burgess, Philby and Blunt were British members of a KGB spy ring that penetrated the intelligence system of the UK and passed vital information to the Soviets during World War Two and the early stages of the Cold War. The members of the ring were Donald Maclean (1913 - 1983), Guy Burgess (1911 - 1963), Harold 'Kim' Philby (1912 - 1988) and Anthony Blunt (1907 - 1983). Several other people have been suggested as belonging to the ring, including John Cairncross. Blunt became a communist in the early 1930s and was recruited by the NKVD (later KGB), the Soviet security agency. While teaching at Cambridge University, Blunt was influential in recruiting the other three, who were all students there. Burgess became a journalist after he left university, but on the outbreak of war joined MI6. Maclean was in the Foreign Office during the same period.

In 1951, tipped off by Philby that they were under suspicion, Burgess and Maclean defected to the Soviet Union, where they spent the rest of their lives. Philby was also a journalist but joined SIS (also known as MI6) in 1940. Just before the war ended, he was appointed head of SIS's anti-Soviet section. Thus the man charged with running operations against the Soviets was a KGB agent. He later became chief British intelligence officer in the United States. After Burgess and Maclean fled to the Soviet Union, Philby came under suspicion and was forced to resign. In 1963, he defected to the Soviet Union, and died there. Blunt worked for MI5 during the war. After the war he had a distinguished career as an art historian. He was director of the Courtauld Institute and Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures. He was knighted in 1956. In 1963, the British government discovered he was a spy but offered him immunity in return for information. In 1979, the story got out and Blunt was stripped of his knighthood.

The Atlantic | Sep 1988 | The Fifth Man | Carver The Fifth Man A reflection, prompted by an obituary, on a famous episode in the annals of espionage by George A. Carver, Jr. ..... he death in Moscow last spring of Harold Adrian Russell (Kim) Philby closed a chapter in the most celebrated espionage case of the postwar yearsbut not the book. Philby, of course, was the most prominent of the Britons who were recruited in the late 1920s and the 1930s while they were students, many at Cambridge, to serve the Soviet Union as they penetrated the British government and its intelligence services. The best-known members of this "Cambridge Comintern," after Philby, were Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, and Anthony Bluntthe last publicly identified only in 1979 as the long-suspected "fourth man." Burgess and Maclean fled to Moscow in 1951, and Philby joined them there (from Beirut) in 1963. These four men have now all died, leaving behind the question, Was there a still-unidentified fifth man, of comparable importance?

As a career intelligence officer and one who has known many of those whose lives were touched by the Philby affair, I have thought frequently about this mystery. Philby's death called it to mind once again. he conventional wisdom, buttressed by Philby in his memoirs (My Silent War), is that in February of 1951 Philby, who was working at the British Embassy in Washington, learned through his official duties in the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) that the net was closing around Donald Macleanthen the head of the American Department at the Foreign Office, in London. Philby alerted his embassy colleague and fellow Soviet agent Guy Burgess, who was then living in Philby's house, and, with Soviet concurrence, induced or directed Burgess to go to London to warn Maclean. (Burgess accomplished this by getting himself arrested three times in one day, for speeding, causing the ambassador to send him home.) The official version of what followed is that a tip from Philby to Maclean, through Burgess, prompted Burgess and Maclean to flee to France on Friday, May 25, 1951, and ultimately to the Soviet Union.

Maclean had been scheduled to be brought in three days later by MI5, Britain's FBI, for interrogation by William (Jim) Skardon, the man who had skillfully wrested a full confession from the atomic spy Klaus Fuchs, and under whose questioning the already very tense Maclean was bound to crack. In 1979 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stated flatly in response to questions in the House of Commons, "It was Philby who warned Burgess to tell Maclean that he was about to be interrogated." This is a neat and tidy account, with no loose ends. Its only defect is that it is implausible. Though Philby undoubtedly did warn Burgess, and Burgess warned Maclean, and though plans were thus readied for the pair's escape if necessary, Philby is not a logical source for the "go" order that actually precipitated their flight. To begin with, Burgess showed absolutely no sense of urgency about getting back to London after his February conversation with Philby. He did not leave Washington until April, took the Queen Mary instead of flying, and did not reach London until May 7.

In behavior both Burgess and Maclean were decidedly erratic, but for the next eighteen daysthrough the morning of May 25neither conducted himself in any way out of the ordinary or gave any outward hint that he was contemplating or preparing for flight. Quite the contrary. Maclean's rocky marriage was in one of its up phases. Maclean and his American wife, Melinda, were again living togethernear Tatsfield, a suburban village in Kentand she was expecting their baby in early June. Burgess had made plans to spend May 25-27 on a naughty weekend in France with a new male friend, an American whom he had met on the Queen Mary. On Thursday, May 24, senior officers of SIS, MI5, and the Foreign Office had a long discussion about Maclean during which it was finally decided to bring him in for questioning by Skardonif the Foreign Secretary, Herbert Morrison, approved. A meeting with Morrison was scheduled for the following morning. It was also decided, however, that even if Morrison gave his approval, as expected, Maclean would not actually be picked up until Monday, May 28.

The official explanation for this decision was that at the time it was not considered a significant delaynot significant enough, at any rate, to disturb anyone's weekend. hat story always rung at least a quarter tone off. It made no professional sense not to bring Maclean in on Friday, as soon as Morrison gave his approval, to let Maclean fret over the weekend and then face a cool and rested Skardon on Monday morning. I am inclined to believe, as others have been, that it took deft maneuvering on someone's part to get the process delayed by this critical weekend without raising any eyebrows. May 25, 1951, was Donald Maclean's thirty-eighth birthday. He had a late, leisurely lunch with friends, whom he made plans to see again in early June, went to his club for another couple of drinks and there cashed a check (for only five, pounds), briefly returned to the Foreign Office, and then caught his normal commuter train, the 5:19 from Charing Cross (where MI5s "watchers" abandoned him, as was their custom). Absolutely nothing in Maclean's behavior on that day gave any hint that he was thinking about leaving England.

On that same fateful Friday, Guy Burgess slept until around 9:00 in his London flat, was given a cup of tea by his live-in lover of many years, Jack Hewit, and made some phone calls to other friends, subsequently interrogated, scheduling several future social appointments. Nothing in Burgess's demeanor or behavior suggested that he then had anything on his mind except the weekend he had made plans to spend with his new American conquest. At some point near or shortly after 10:00 A.M. a senior MI5 officer and the head of Foreign Office security held a brief meeting with Herbert Morrison, in the Foreign Secretary's office, at which Morrison promptly approved Maclean's interrogation. At almost the same time (the sequence here is not entirely clear) somethingpresumably a warning delivered in person or by phonesuddenly changed Burgess's whole pattern of behavior. From that moment the previously languid, unconcerned Burgess was a whirling dervish. In a state of obvious agitation, Burgess kept a 10:30 A.M.

appointment with his American friend in the lobby of a Green Park hotel, ten minutes' walk from Burgess's flat, and explained that their weekend might have to be scrubbed, because, as the American later said that Burgess had explained, "a young friend of mine in the Foreign Office is in serious trouble. I am the only one who can help him." Burgess promised to call the American back, but never did. He rented a car, bought a suitcase, packed an assortment of clothes, grabbed £300 in cash and some savings certificatesplus his treasured copy of Jane Austen's collected novels, and Hewit's overcoatdrove to Tatsfield, had dinner with Donald and Melinda Maclean at their home, and then took Maclean to the Southampton dock. Burgess and Maclean abandoned the car and were the last two passengers to board the S.S. Falaise, the midnight ferry to St. Malo, in France.

hatever contingency plans had been made by Burgess at least for Maclean's eventual departure (Burgess is known to have been working with Blunt on the matter, and their Soviet controller, Yuri Modin, was in London, apparently to assist), it is most unlikely that the Friday-morning alert came to Burgess, in London, from Philby, in Washington, either directly or indirectly (by way of the Soviets). Barely possible, perhaps, but most unlikely. From across the Atlantic, five time zones removed, Philby could hardly have kept abreast of a fluid situation in London, even if he had virtually instant access to all relevant official cable traffic received from England. In any event it would have been operational folly for Philby to use the telephone in this situation, especially to call Burgess, particularly before the days of direct dialing. Any Washington-to-London call would have had to go through at least two operators, either or both of whom might have kept call logs.

Despite Prime Minister Thatcher's 1979 statement, it is much more plausible that the source for Burgess's May 25 alert was not Philby but someone in Londonnot Blunt, then an art historian, no longer in MI5, but rather someone in a position to know. Only in a bad novel would any such warning, initiated from Washington, reach Burgess just about the time that Morrison was approving Maclean's interrogation. The actual warning call to Burgess could, of course, have easily been made by a London-based Soviet agent, or by some other Soviet agent, but even if this is what happened, it is still more likely that someone in London, rather than Philby, apprised the Soviets that Maclean was to be interrogated the following Monday. Burgess and Maclean's last-minute escape is the most dramatic sign that there may have been a fifth man, but it is far from the only sign. A host of allegations by defectors, of communications intercepts, and of inexplicably botched or compromised MI5 counterespionage operations all point to a similar conclusion. If there actually was such a fifth man, the pool of serious candidates, with the requisite access and seniority, is very small.

Indeed, it probably consists of no more than three people. One is Guy Liddell, who was the deputy director general of MI5 from 1947 until he retired, in 1952. He, Burgess, and Blunt were friends, and Liddell was very much a part of the hothouse wartime circle revolving around Victor Rothschild's 5 Bentinck Street flat, in which Burgess and Blunt both lived. During the war Liddell ran MI5's counterespionage division, where Anthony Blunt was his personal assistant. Philby had a high regard for Liddell, whom he described in My Silent Warwith Empsonian ambiguityas "an ideal senior officer for a young man to learn from." In 1944 Liddell assisted Philby in the successful bureaucratic knifing of Philby's then superior, Felix Cowgill, so that Philby could become the head of SIS's expanding counterintelligence effort (which Philby terms his "Fulfillment"). Liddell, however, was greatly admired, professionally and personally, and has many staunch defenders.

These include Sir Dick White, Philby's nemesis in both MI5 and MI6, both of which White headed, and Peter Wright (of Spycatcher fame), one of the most avid of all mole-hunters. The two others are Graham Mitchell and Sir Roger Hollis. In 1951 Mitchell was in charge of counterespionage; he became deputy director general of MI5 (under Hollis) in 1956 and retired in 1963. He drafted the patently mendacious, demonstrably erroneous 1955 white paper on the Burgess-Maclean defection. On the strength of that document the Foreign Secretary, Harold Macmillan, gave Philby what the latter would call the happiest day of his life by publicly affirming Philby's innocence in the House of Commonsdeclaring, in a statement that Mitchell helped draft, that Philby was not the third man ("if indeed, there was one"). Hollis became deputy in 1953 and moved up in 1956 to be director general until his retirement, in 1965. Mitchell and Hollis were the subject of a series of investigations during the 1960s.

Both were eventually declared innocent of any wrongdoing. s noted above, the official position of Her Majesty's Government is that Burgess was warned by Philby, period; that Hollis and Mitchell have been investigated and exonerated (Liddell has never been subjected to formal scrutiny); and that these matters are now closed. Closed they will remain, at least officially. For different but, in each case, strong political reasons, neither the Conservative nor the Labour Party would want to re-open this painful chapter in British history, or would see any point in doing so. In a larger sense, however, the Philby affair, with all it connotes, remains wide openand will stay open for a long time, perhaps perpetually. The literature on the subject is voluminous (a partial bibliography would fill several pages) and continually growing. It seems unlikely, however, that the full truth will ever be known or that the matter will ever be laid totally to rest. Serious students will doubtless always be divided with respect to many key points. There will probably always be disputes about the motives of the people involved, about the real significance and impact of their activitiesand about their legacies, if any, in the form of continuing penetrations.

As Kim Philby disappears into the mists of memory, the conspiracy that bears his name has assumed its rightful place among that small group of historical conundrums about which our curiosity seems destined never to wane. What do you think? Discuss this article in Post & Riposte . Copyright © 1988 by George A. Carver, Jr. All rights reserved. The Atlantic Monthly ; September 1988; The Fifth Man - 88.09; Volume 262, No. 3; page 26-29. Philby, Burgess and Maclean Reviews & Ratings - IMDb IMDb 16 out of 16 people found the following review useful: Classic spy drama - and its true! from Sydney, Australia 25 February 2007 I'm surprised there are no other comments about this TV movie even though it was made 30 years ago.

The story, considerably expanded and updated, appeared in the mini-series "Cambridge Spies" in 2003, but this version was a powerful piece of television with plenty of drama and fine performances from Derek Jacobi as the flamboyant Guy Burgess, Anthony Bate as the close-mouthed Kim Philby and Michael Culver as the neurotic Mclean. The key element is: why did these sons from "good" families go over to the Soviets in the 1930s and stay there? As Sir Steward Menzies head of MI6, here played by the imposing Richard Hurndall, says; "These chaps can't be spies, they are people like us." (In "Cambridge Spies" this remark is attributed to Lord Halifax, British Ambassador to Washington, who then commences a hunt through the embassy kitchens for the culprit.) I think perhaps "Cambridge Spies", which covers Anthony Blunt as well provides a better explanation of this but in the earlier film director Gordon Flemyng captures the excitement of the events.

To round out the story, viewers should also see John Schlesinger's little gem "An Englishman Abroad" (1983) where Coral Browne, the distinguished Australian-born actress re-enacts her encounter with Guy Burgess (wonderfully played by Alan Bates) in Moscow after his defection. Anthony Blunt was the subject of a play by Alan Bennett, subsequently filmed for TV as "A Question of Attribution", which contains an imagined conversation between HM the Queen and her erstwhile art curator  cute, but not very informative. Was the above review useful to you? 6 out of 6 people found the following review useful: sticks to the facts 19 January 2008 *** This review may contain spoilers *** A low key, but excellent portrayal of the Cambridge spy saga. Later treatments of the story haven't really measured up to this original. The three central characters are well cast, in particular Michael Culver as the unbalanced Donald Maclean, who despite his extreme value as a penetration agent, must have been a real nightmare for his Soviet controllers. Maclean's long-suffering wife is played very well by Elizabeth Seal.

The Philby persona is well portrayed as a unique amalgam of outward charm and vulnerability with the hidden core of ruthless fanaticism......He didn't do it for the money and he was never a double agent. Derek Jacobi plays Guy Burgess as a sinister buffoon and retrobate, which works well in the context of the dramatic representation, but the real-life Burgess was a much more complex individual, with a charming and witty side to his character. He had a wide circle of loyal friends and was very, very well connected. Burgess was once heard to announce for all the world to hear," I am a Comintern agent !" Presumably, everyone who heard that either thought it was just Guy being whimsical, or perhaps some didn't even give a damn if he was a Soviet spy. Such were the peculiarities of the British establishment of the day, which the Russians were able to exploit to their enormous advantage. Eventually Burgees and Maclean defect to the east together, and the whole ring starts to unravel. The portrayals of Philby's subsequent interrogation duels with Milmo and Skardon are absolutely first rate and true to the facts.

Everyone knew he was as guilty as sin, but he ran rings around all of them, got off the hook, and a few years later, slipped away to the USSR himself. The Russians subsequently decorated him as a hero and he lived out his days in self-satisfied privilege, providing motivational coaching to the godamned KGB football team, and even taking time out to get married again. Later, he was always available to give smug interviews to the western journalist who chronicled his strange, but very successful career. One can't help thinking though, that back in the Stalin era, he would likely have been shot when he arrived in Moscow after defecting from the west. The great mystery of Philby, and one which the film leaves appropriately unresolved, is how he managed to induce so many clever people to trust him in the first place. I believe he rates a whole movie to himself mainly to explore this central issue. For now though, I believe that "Burgess, Philby, and Maclean" remains the definitive portrait of the Cambridge spy ring. Very rarely screened nowadays, but it hopefully will turn up on DVD. R. B.

5 September 2010 *** This review may contain spoilers *** From the days when ITV would still sporadically compete with the BBC in the quality drama stakes, Philby, Burgess and Maclean is a surprisingly effective dramatisation of Britain's most disastrous spy scandal despite a compact 78-minute running time and being produced long before the revelations about the 'Fourth Man,' Anthony Blunt, made the headlines. While the latter did rewrite the book on what was known about the scandal and probably rendered this out of date enough to keep it from being rebroadcast even on satellite TV, it's still a surprisingly accurate account that sticks to the facts as they were known at the time. Ian Curteis' impressive script never feels constrained by the brief running time and is adept at drawing out the absurdities and ironies from character. It gives a sympathetic airing to their motives  before the war, communism seemed to be the only hope against fascism  and their subsequent loneliness and disappointments  Maclean was never fully convinced about communism while Philby seems to feel trapped for life by a youthful decision.

Nor is the emotional fallout with the wives forgotten, Maclean's almost as disgusted by his homosexual past with a shallow man she despised that he hid from her as by his treachery. But above all it's the sheer believably unbelievable incompetence and absurd class-based logic that allowed them to flourish for so long that stands out time and again.

Derek Jacobi's Burgess  "drunk, dirty and dissolute but spasmodically brilliant," a first-rate analyst with second rate ideals and access to information far beyond his level of security clearance thanks to the 'Old Queen's Network' - is frequently dismissed from consideration as a potential traitor because "He's an embarrassment, but no-one as openly indiscreet as he is could possibly be a serious security risk." Anthony Bate's excellently realised Philby and Michael Culver's at the end of his tether Maclean both manage to maintain their positions and ability to betray their country because, at a time when spy hunts went after secretaries and chauffeurs, it was inconceivable that 'one of us' could be a traitor: as Richard Hurndall's Sir Stewart Menzies protests when their names are mentioned in passing, "These men  they're our sort of people." But even more than the Old Boy Network, the sheer 9-to-5 bureaucratic mentality of the security service works in their favor: Maclean and Burgess were able to meet in the evenings and defect at the weekend because Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison (Arthur Lowe) wouldn't approve their arrest until ministers had been briefed when they got back to work the following

 week and, incredibly, the agents tailing Maclean were only working office hours.

Even after they suspected Philby and the truth became obvious, if not possible to definitively prove, the establishment's clumsy response was to close ranks, deny everything and simply reassign him to another sensitive post out of the public eye until it all blows over. Throughout it's surprisingly tense and excellently acted despite being a game of cat and mouse where the cat seems bloody-mindedly determined to convince itself that the mouse is really a cat. The low budget production values aren't always convincing  it's the kind of production where putting some ornate decorations around a doorframe or an oriental lamp on a desk is supposed to convince us we're in Turkey rather than the Surrey stockbroker belt  and Gordon Flemyng's direction stumbles into heavy-handed symbolism when Maclean's nervous breakdown in a bathroom is overlaid with slo-mo shots of atom bombs and their victims, but only the inappropriate synthesiser score works against it: not merely wrong for a period piece, it's not very good on its own terms either. But it's a minor niggle in an extremely effectively low-key drama that still holds up remarkably well today and deserves to be as well-remembered as the BBC's John le Carre adaptations. Was the above review useful to you?

3 out of 5 people found the following review useful: A Good, But Outdated, Piece Of Historical Drama 22 August 2010 *** This review may contain spoilers *** At the height of the Cold War the British intelligence agency MI6 was rocked by the revelation that three of its members Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, all Cambridge educated and from "the right families" as it were, had spent decades spying for its arch-enemy the Soviet Union before defecting to that nation. 1977's Philby, Burgess and Maclean is a dramatization of their story from 1945 through 1955. While this production is now outdated thanks to revelations made after the film was made and some of its production values are a bit mixed, it stands up as a good piece of historical drama nonetheless. The film's backbone lies in the three actors playing the spies. Anthony Bate is perfectly cast as the quiet but methodical Kim Philby, not only in being a physical doppelganger but capturing the spirit of the man as well (as the press conference scene shows when compared with the archival footage of the real event).

Derek Jacobi, one of the UK's finest character actors, brings the flamboyant Guy Burgess to life splendidly as well in scenes such as his argument about Communism with Melinda Maclean. Michael Culver plays Donald Maclean, who overtime becomes increasingly paranoid and neurotic as MI6 increasingly suspects him. Together these three actors bring to life these three very different and complex historical figures. The film also features a fine supporting cast as well. Amongst them are Richard Hurndall as MI6 chief Sir Stewart Menzies, Philip Stone as Farquesson and David Markham as Skardon who find themselves trying to unravel the complex web involving the three spies. In a small but very important role is Anthony Langdon as KGB Colonel Volkov whose information to MI6 begin the train of events that led to the revelings and later defections of the three spies. The highlights of the supporting cast though are Ingrid Hafner as Aileen Philby and Elizabeth Seal as Melinda Maclean, the wives of Kim Philby and Guy Burgess respectively who try to understand the worlds they find themselves in as their husbands are revealed as spies.

Like Bate, Jacobi and Culver the supporting cast bring to life the people who lived alongside the spies unknowingly for the most part. The production vales are a bit mixed at times. Mike Grimes production design recreates the various offices and homes that the events took place in, especially the offices. The camera work of David Wood, while workman like, still serves the production rather well. Other production values are a bit mixed though. This is especially true of the music which is entirely made up of electronic synthesizer music that does nothing but clash with the film's 1940s-50s setting. Another mixed element is the direction of Gordon Flemyng which works for the most part but there are some sequences in the film, such as the sequence where Maclean suffers a nervous breakdown while images of Japanese atomic bomb victims flash on the screen, seem rather odd especially when combined with the out of place electronic synthesizer music. The results are all together rather mixed. Last but not least is the script by Ian Curteis. Curteis does a good job of condensing nearly a decades worth of events into around an hour and a half worth of screen time.

In some respects the film take place in the middle of the story between Volkov's revealed high ranking spies in British intelligence through the defection of Burgess and Maclean and Philby practically leaving MI6 as a result of that agency's suspicions of him. One wonder if perhaps it would have been better if the film would have started a bit earlier with the spies recruitment at Cambridge leading up to Philby's eventual defection in 1963. Overall the film remains faithful to the real life events, or at least as much as was known at the time. Which brings us to another fault of the film, though one that is apparent only in retrospect. Years after the film was made a fourth Cambridge recruited spy, Anthony Blunt, was revealed and rewrote a chunk of this spy scandal (as seen in the more recent BBC mini-series Cambridge Spies). As a result the film, and its script, is good but outdated. Philby, Burgess and Maclean is an outdated but nonetheless a good piece of historical drama. The film has a fine cast it has mixed production values and a script that, while good means that the film is outdated.

Overall though the film presents this real-life tale of secrets and betrayal, both on political and personal levels, effectively and perhaps that's the most important thing. Was the above review useful to you? THE FOURTH MAN: The Definitive Account of Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, and Donald Maclean and Who Recruited Them to Spy for Russia by Andrew Boyle | Kirkus Reviews Tweet KIRKUS REVIEW Prime Minister Thatcher's startling acknowledgment, in the House of Commons, that the eminent art historian Anthony Blunt was indeed the ""Fourth Man"" of Boyle's title--as the book strongly hints--is all the more remarkable for its genesis in a single 40-year-old indiscretion which Boyle, the bloodhound-biographer of Erskine Childers and other shady characters, sniffed out. His sleuthing is more impressive, indeed, than his book. It is of course chiefly the Philby-Burgess-Maclean story filled out and updated; and, titled The Climate of Treason in England, it dwells at great (and, to most Americans, obscure) length on their belonging to a particular Cambridge--even Trinity College, Cambridge--generation, as if that accounted for their treachery.

That all three were neurotic personalities, not mere ""dupes""; that the Cambridge Left was composed overwhelmingly of activists, not conspirators--all this is obscured by Boyle's crude, bumper-sticker anti-Communsim (uncomfortably reminiscent, here, of the Fifties). And when he submerges that theme it is mostly to parade instance after instance of the flamboyant Burgess' outrages, the charming Maclean's scrapes, the dogged Philby's clark moods, and the drunkenness and dirty-sex of all three--most of them familiar stories, snidely retold. But reading about their repeated indiscretions, one does marvel--with so cool a commentator as Rebecca West (The New Meaning of Treason)--that they were kept in sensitive positions for so long; and this Boyle's detailed disclosures--many from the FBI and CIA files to which the U.S. Freedom of Information Act gave him access--help explain by indicating, to the undoubted chagrin of some named, just who knew what when. And it is thanks to those same U.S. files that the story heats up when Maclean, transmitting secrets from wartime Washington, first comes under the suspicion that eventually will undo them all.

To the end, though, they had no lack of steadfast friends--including the man to whom Burgess confided his and Blunt's Soviet entanglement back in the mid-Thirties. . . and who now, along with countless other P-B-M familiars, has spilled the unofficial beans, at least, to Boyle. Definitive it's not (or scrupulous or tasteful); but it certainly is bizarre. Pub Date: Feb. 1st, 1979 Publisher: Dial Kim Philby, Double Agent, Dies - NYTimes.com Kim Philby, Double Agent, Dies By STEVEN ERLANGER Published: May 12, 1988 Correction Appended H. A. R. (Kim) Philby, the double agent whose betrayal of his country and his social class indelibly marked British politics, has died in Moscow, officials in London said yesterday. He was 76 years old. The officials said they learned of the death from the Soviet Embassy in London, but that no date or cause of death was given. Mr. Philby fled to the Soviet Union in 1963, when his involvement in a Soviet spy ring was about to be revealed.

Twelve years earlier, in 1951, Mr. Philby's warning had allowed two fellow spies, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, to flee to Moscow just before British counterintelligence was to interrogate them. Thus Mr. Philby, who worked for British intelligence for 30 years and became one of its leading agents, came to be known as the ''third man.'' It was not until 1979 that the long-suspected ''fourth man,'' Anthony Blunt, Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, was publicly revealed to have recruited the other three to the cause of Soviet Communism while they were Cambridge undergraduates in the 1930's. Mr. Burgess and especially Mr. Maclean, who served in high posts in the British Embassy in Washington during and after World War II, provided the Soviet Union a wealth of detail on American and British policy at the height of the cold war. But Mr. Philby's treachery was the most serious.

He rose to very high rank in the British Secret Intelligence Service, known as M.I.6, and some thought he might become its chief; he ran its entire counterespionage operation and set up the section that spied on the Soviet Union. After his defection in 1965, the Russians awarded him the Red Banner of Honor for his services to the K.G.B.; Mr. Philby later received the privileges of a K.G.B. general. In 1968, he published his memoirs, ''My Secret War.'' In January of this year, Mr. Philby was interviewed by a British journalist, Phillip Knightley, for articles that were published recently in The Sunday Times of London. Asked if, despite all the betrayals, he would do it all again, Mr. Philby responded, ''Absolutely.'' He said he missed little in England except some friends, Colman's mustard and Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce. He said he had found peace and a happy fourth marriage, to a Soviet woman named Rufa. Cause of Death Not Indicated Mr. Philby also said he suffered from an irregular heartbeat, and had been hospitalized for it. There was no indication yesterday of the cause of death.

The damage Mr. Philby did to British intelligence remains a subject of debate, limited by strict British secrecy laws. But his betrayal and that of his colleagues poisoned relations between British and American intelligence services for many years, with residues that last until today. And the magnitude of their betrayal - of colleagues, class and country -became a kind of metaphor for the diffuse loyalties of the British Establishment that not only inspired a generation of spy fiction, most notably that of John le Carre, but also fed into the middle-class counterreaction in British Conservative politics exemplified by the current Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who maintains a mistrust for both the Foreign Office and career intelligence officers. Harold Adrian Russell Philby, who was described by friends of the early 1940's as an immensely handsome and charming man who drank too much, stuttered badly and had an eye for pretty women, was born on New Year's Day, 1912, in Ambala, India. Son of Arab Scholar His father, Harry St.

John Bridger Philby, was a famous British figure of good family and colonial aspirations: an author, desert explorer, Arab scholar and friend of the only other Arabist of the time who would be more famous, T. E. Lawrence. In 1912, the senior Philby was a civil servant in the Indian Government; within a decade, he had been interior minister of Mesopotamia (Iraq), an adviser to Winston Churchill and chief British representative in Trans-Jordan; later he became a close adviser to the Saudi king, Ibn Saud, and the explorer of the desert vastness then known as the ''Empty Quarter of Arabia.'' In 1930, he resigned from the British Foreign Service and became a Moslem and took the name of Hajj Abdullah. The younger Philby was known as Kim, after the hero of Rudyard Kipling's novel of that name, a young boy who serves his country as a spy. The young Mr. Philby had a brilliant record at Westminster School, one of Britain's finest public schools, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. There he became treasurer of the University Socialist Society. The true timing and venue of Mr. Philby's recruitment by Soviet intelligence is unclear.

He maintained that he was recruited not at Cambridge but in 1934, after a visit to Vienna and his first marriage, to Litzi Kohlman, an Austrian Communist. That marriage ended in divorce in 1938. Justified His Argument In ''My Secret War,'' Mr. Philby justified his espionage with the argument that the Western democracies were too weak and corrupt to put up a struggle against the Germany of Adolf Hitler. 1 ANTHONY BLUNT, FOURTH MAN IN BRITISH SPYING SCANDAL, IS DEAD AT 75 - NYTimes.com ANTHONY BLUNT, FOURTH MAN IN BRITISH SPYING SCANDAL, IS DEAD AT 75 By JON NORDHEIMER, Special to the New York Times Published: March 27, 1983 LONDON, March 26— Anthony Blunt, a former curator of Queen Elizabeth II's art collection who in 1979 was exposed as having been the mysterious fourth man in a Soviet spying ring, collapsed and died at breakfast in his London home today. He was 75 years old. Mr.

Blunt, who had a history of heart trouble, died in his elegant sixth-floor apartment near Marble Arch, according to his brother. His exposure as the mysterious fourth man sought in the celebrated Burgess-Maclean-Philby spying scandal that rocked Britain in the 1950's and 1960's caused a sensation when it was brought to light by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in November 1979. He was immediately stripped of a knighthood that had been conferred on him in 1956 and which he had retained even after the British authorities had heard him confess in 1964 to subversive activities that had reached back to his days as a brilliant young don at Cambridge University. Recruited Spies for Soviet In his confession Mr. Blunt acknowledged that he had recruited spies for the Soviet Union from among young radical students at Cambridge, passed information to the Russians while he served as a high-ranking British intelligence officer during World War II, and had helped two of his former Cambridge students who had become Soviet ''moles'' inside the British Foreign Service, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, escape to the Soviet Union in 1951 just as their activities were about to be exposed. Mr.

Burgess died in the Soviet Union in 1963 and the death of Mr. Maclean was announced just three weeks ago by Moscow. The other Soviet mole in the spy scandal, Harold (Kim) Philby, who also fled to the Soviet Union after his part in the espionage ring became known in 1963, is now the only surviving member of the spying ring that had its roots in the elite circle of Cambridge University radicals in the 1930's. Mr. Blunt resigned from the British Academy, where he was recognized as a distinguished and much-honored art historian, but he was never directly punished by the British Government because he had been granted immunity from prosecution at the time he made his secret confession in 1964. The revelation that he had maintained his reputation and standing in the upper reaches of social and art circles for 15 years after his role as a spy had become known to the authorities was denounced in Parliament as an example of how individuals with powerful friends could be protected in British society. Retained as Queen's Curator There were also questions raised about why Mr.

Blunt had been kept on after 1964 as curator of the Queen's art collection - formally known as Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures - when the Government learned of his spying. It was regarded as almost certain that the Queen herself had been informed of Mr. Blunt's confession. The explanation given was that his role at Buckingham Palace carried with it no access to classified information, and it was also decided not to embarrass him in any way that would end his continuing cooperation with the authorities on matters of intelligence. Mr. Blunt served from 1947 to 1974 as director of the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and is credited with training a generation of art historians in England and winning the institute recognition as one of the best in the world for the study of art history. But all his professional accomplishments were ultimately overshadowed by his early devotion to Communism and the betrayal of his country. At Cambridge he was a central and influential figure in a university club called the Apostles, whose members, most of whom came from the ranks of the privileged, saw themselves as the leading intellectuals of revolution.

Tried to Recruit American One American member of this circle, Michael Straight, in a book recently published, described how Mr. Blunt, then a young don, invited him in 1937 to become a Soviet agent in the United States. Mr. Straight said he declined the offer. Later, during the Kennedy Administration, Mr. Straight revealed his contacts with Mr. Blunt and also Guy gess to the F.B.I. He was subsequently interrogated by the British authorities, who told him that his information was the first substantive account of the espionage of Mr. Blunt, who at the time was Sir Anthony Blunt with personal connections at Buckingham Palace. It was this information that led to the questioning of Sir Anthony, his confession and acceptence of immunity in return for continued cooperation. He had been under suspicion for many years but had always maintained his innocence. But confronted with Mr. Straight's allegations, he at last acknowledged his crimes. Sir Michael Havers, the British Attorney General, later described the moment. ''He maintained his denial,'' he said. ''He was offered immunity from prosecution. He sat in silence for a while.

He got up, looked out of the window, poured himself a drink and after a few minutes confessed.'' Defended His Behavior After his public unmasking nearly four years ago, Mr. Blunt said he had made ''an appalling mistake'' that he came to ''bitterly regret,'' but he defended his past behavior in a brief statement: ''In the mid-1930's it seemed to me and to many of my contemporaries that the Communist Party and Russia constituted the only firm bulwark against Fascism, since the Western democracies were taking an uncertain, compromising attitude towards Germany.'' Details of the nature of the espionage carried out by Mr. Blunt for the Russians have never been revealed, although it is believed that they did not directly cause loss of life or compromise military operations. Mr. Blunt is to be cremated after a private funeral. Illustrations: photo of Anthony Blunt

Question: Burgess, Philby, Maclean...... . Who was known as the 'Fourth Man'?
Answer: ANTHONY BLUNT